Freedom for Tara

Chapter 5 – Watchers

If you have ever missed the final step while walking down a flight of stairs, then you have some idea of what it was like to be transported instantly down to the surface of whatever world the Var-Lish ship was orbiting. You start your step in one place, and you put your foot down thousands of miles away. At the same time, the rest of your body feels briefly like its been suddenly submerged in twenty feet of water, only you can breathe, and you don’t get wet.

I stumbled forward and was caught by Tre’nae as I fought to right myself and readjust to what was obviously a slightly higher natural gravity. I frowned and stared at my feet until the feeling of rising in some giant elevator diminished and faded. After that, I just felt bloated. That was when I spied the straw I had previously pushed through. Picking it up, I turned around and tried to pass it back through the portal. It was as though I were poking the thing against a pane of glass.

“One way door,” I said to myself.

“What?!” Asked Gerisha, looking like she was going to pass out.

“Nothing,” I replied and pocketed the piece of plastic as I turned back around to see what we would be up against. “So, do either of you see anything you recognize?” I was staring out at the clearing, thinking that it could almost be something you might find on Earth. There were fairly tall trees where we were, and then again about a hundred meters directly in front of us. To our left and right were tall cliffs of stone.

“I guess we go through the clearing,” said Tre’nae.

Instinctively, I squinted at the open space with skepticism. Not that we had a choice, but I wasn’t ready to go blindly walking into what was an obvious setup. I also took a better look at the cliffs. There were no caves or holes for a hidden ambush, which meant that whatever the Var-Lish had paired us against, it was either in the ground or hiding in the trees at the other side. Unfortunately, the cliffs were also unscalable, which meant no sneaky side routes.

As I scanned the natural walls on either side, my eyes fell upon the sky. I wasn’t expecting to see the same atmosphere and clouds like those on Earth, but there was something really artificial about the whole thing, like I was looking at it the sky through a speckled window. And in fact, I was.

“It’s the arena barrier,” she said when she noticed what I was starring at. “The tiny star-like lights are observation channels, so they can watch us. Nothing can pass in or out. The only exit is through the outbound portal.”

Perfectly in time with her words, there were four warning tones and a slight static rush at my back. When I turned to look, the portal we had just come through was gone.

“Okay, that’s creepy,” I commented and focused my gaze back to the open space. I heard something familiar in the distance, and noticed a brief flash of light through the trees at the other side.

“That’s where we have to go,” said the four-armed woman.

“Then why are we just standing here?!” The Fretah seemed almost panicked and I reached over and put my hand on her arm. She jumped, but didn’t withdraw from my touch.

“We have three hours to reach the other side of the clearing and we’re not in any imminent danger. There’s no harm in assessing our situation.”

The long-eared female took a staggered breath and nodded once, calming.

Turning my attention back to the field, I considered what I originally took to be slightly discolored mounds. The overall surface of the clearing was anything but even, but in three distinct places, the slight swell of earth was just too unnatural. I pointed to what I was looking at.

“There. Something under the ground. And two more, there and there.”

Gerisha started speaking in what I assumed was some form of her natural language. From the sound of it, she was cursing under her breath.

“So straight through or along a wall,” asked Tre’nae.

“I say we make a run for it,” exclaimed the Fretah, breathing a bit harder again.

I shook my head. “Maybe. Along the wall has the advantage of only one direction for an attack. Of course it also means we limit possible escape routes.”

“We could split up. Each take a route. One on each side, and one through the middle.” I nodded, considering the Makali’s words.

“Split their attention. Also good, only…”

“What?”

“Well, we’re assuming an awful lot about an enemy that we can’t see and know nothing about. For example, we’re assuming there are only three attackers…”

“Only!?” Cried Gerisha.

“What I mean is, suppose those mounds aren’t the creatures themselves, but rather doorways into a bigger chamber below. We could be facing dozens of smaller creatures, or a network of tunnels that could be opened up anywhere, or…”

The Fretah woman started openly crying, and placed her hands over her face.

I raised my brows in surprise. Were all galactic races this easily upset. I checked Tre’nae and saw that although she looked concerned, she was nowhere near as panicked as her teammate. I needed to change the situation.

“Alright, I say we stay together. No matter what awaits, we’re all against it as one, agreed?”

The Fretah looked up, sniffing. “Together? Really?”

I nodded, and smiled. “Either we all make it, or none of us do.”

To my side, I heard Tre’nae sigh. I wasn’t sure if it was in relief or frustration, not that it mattered.

“I agree,” she said simply.

“Good. Then it’s settled. I suppose there’s no real advantage to sneaking slowly across. Either they will know of our presence or not. Personally, I’d rather be moving when we get attacked…”

Gerisha started cursing again.

“…but I guess we could get a little closer first to see what happens,” I conceded, not wanting to upset the woman any further. “Let’s get this over with.”

I started forward, my own adrenalin level rising with my heart-rate. It was one thing to bravely face a dangerous situation, but this was an orchestrated scenario designed in an enemy’s favor. We were knowingly walking into an ambush. Behind me Tre’nae and Gerisha followed, all of us hyper alert to any changes around us. I was staring at the three mounds, so I saw it when the top split open on the closest one. There was movement, and then a hissing sound just off to my right.

“Run!” I shouted even as I heard a thud and saw Gerisha flying off toward the mound like a rag doll on a fishing line. I turned my body to follow her and observed that she had been literally lifted into the air to land atop what had come up out of the earth, and I got only a glimpse of a light-colored bulge before something hit me hard in the back. Momentarily stunned, I would have tripped and fallen save for the fact that several fleshy tentacles were looped around my body and were holding me up. A half second later there was a hard jerk and my chin crashed into my chest as I too was yanked backwards and up.

I hardly had time to realize that my feet had left the ground before I landed face-up on something soft and squishy, and even though it was like falling into a large easy-chair or sofa, I still hit hard enough to knock the wind out of me. I gasped and fought to draw a breath, my body limp and disoriented.

Blinking, I struggled to comprehend what I was seeing above me as I gazed up at the sky. All along the periphery of my vision were dancing lights, no doubt caused by the sudden changes in acceleration, but mixed in with those were the more stable lights embedded in the Var-Lish arena field. Like stars in a night sky, these day-time points of light peppered the heavens by the millions, and I realized after a few moments that there were so many present that much of the light we were bathed in was actually generated by the field, and not the sun, which had nearly set to my left. It was the whoosh of sound coming back that brought me out of my dazed confusion. I hadn’t even been aware of the lack until I abruptly heard someone screaming. From the sound of it, it was Gerisha, but I found myself a little too busy to check at that moment.

As my senses returned to normal, I felt that I was laying with my back arched over top of a squishy mound of flesh, my feet nearly touching the grass-covered ground. My arms were pinned at my sides by something that felt and looked vaguely like the tentacles of an octopus. I could feel a living undulation at my back and I shivered in revulsion. When I tried to struggle, I noticed that my ankles were being held so that my thighs were spread open quite wide. From the wet, semi-slimy feel of warm flesh climbing around my calves toward my knees, I assumed that some horror similar to the tentacles encircling my torso we responsible for entrapping my other limbs as well.

“Shit!” I cursed, finding myself thoroughly helpless against the powerful and fluid appendages of the creature. I was more angry at myself that I had been so easy to take down, than I was with the alien entity below me, and having no luck at all in freeing myself, I turned my head to the side to see if one of the others might have been able to stay clear. What my eyes settled on was another of the mounds, and stretched over top of it was the Fretah woman, pinned in much the same way that I was, only face down. She was putting up quite the fight, but I could tell at once that she was as equally trapped by the creature. I was surprised at her vigor until I noticed that some of the tendrils around her legs had continued up into her skirt, and from the motion of her pelvis, I suddenly understood that it wasn’t a simple fight-or-flight struggle the girl was putting up, but rather her body’s natural reaction to being touched in certain ways. In short, the creature below her had already started to assault her sexually.

Stunned, I could hardly pull my eyes away from the Fretah’s plight until I felt a warm wet touch creeping up my own thighs. Like a dozen slow, slimy slugs, the alien fingers of flesh were gradually reaching up my body toward my apex. In a moment, I too would be fighting to resist the creature’s rape.

“Son of a bitch!” I cursed, and pulled violently at my bonds. It was no use. The creature holding me was strong enough to resist any amount of fight I could throw at it in my restricted position, and the exertion only weakened me further. “Oh no… shit, shit, shit…” The shifting pressure moved higher and higher up the insides of my thighs until I knew it had to be reaching into my own loose skirt. The garments were hardly more than a soft, cotton-like wrap that could be folded at the waist and worn at almost any length from calf to mini. Most of those in our prison complex wore it somewhere above the knee for simplicity and comfort. Right now, I was wishing I still had on a pair of pants. The undergarments that the replicator provided were little more than very stretchy panties which the creature was even now pushing out of the way so that it could reach my crotch unhindered.

As it gently slipped over my labia, I suddenly found it hard to breathe. My body went rigid, and I noticed that something else was sliding into the arm holes of my top, then up and over my chest. About the same time these new digits were reaching around my breasts, the ones down in my lap had decided that I had had enough foreplay and started easing into me.

“AHHH! N-N-NOO! Ughnn! You f-fuckers!” There was simply nothing I could do but cry out in frustration as the slippery fingers gradually worked their way inside me, twisting and exploring me as they went.

I was frightened to be sure. I had experimented with bondage with past lovers, and found it exhilarating and highly arousing, but this was different. It’s one thing to have a trusted lover do things to you while you’re restrained, but the creature raping me was a total unknown. There was no “safe word” that would get it to stop, no matter how much I screamed and begged, nor did I know what its ultimate goal might be. It could simply want to give me a good time, after which it would leave me be. Or, it might be about to impregnate me with some vile offspring that would eat me alive from the inside out.

Whatever the case, my time was quickly running out. Part of the problem was that as frightened as I was, I couldn’t deny that what was being done to me felt good… really good. If it had hurt, I could have resisted, but instead, I found myself feeling guilty that I was already gushing with arousal after just a few minutes. It was the strange warm skin of the creature. Somehow, it pulsed and changed, repeatedly sprouting thousands of tiny bumps or nubs that vibrated and caressed every inch of skin they touched. It gave the impression that it was moving within me, even when it wasn’t, and the effect was maddeningly erotic. The long digits gliding into my depths were quickly working me toward what was sure to be a real mind blaster of an orgasm, and nothing I had heard about these games led me to believe that the creature would be stopping any time soon.

“I am NOT g-g-going out this w-way! Ughnnn… oh g-god!”

The thinner tendrils at my chest were wrapping up my nipples, pinching and teasing them until I wanted to scream. I was amazed that something so alien could know how to arouse me so precisely, when it hit me. It couldn’t. There really was no way it could know Terran physiology, let alone what kind of pressure and touch it needed to really get my juices flowing… Unless it was able to feel what I was feeling.

What did Benie call them? Contact telepaths? If that were the case, it would certainly explain a lot, because my nemesis was playing me like a master plays a fine musical instrument. I started to tremble as tiny feather-light feelers lighted all around my sex, tickling and stroking the taut flesh at my perineum and to the sides of my labia. Still more reached up to my clitoris, swirling around the tiny nub of flesh, forcing a deep groan of pleasure to escape my lips. Unable to keep my hips still any longer, I felt them take up a rolling undulation of their own accord, much like I had witnessed with Gerisha.

I couldn’t concentrate. I was lost in the rapidly increasing sexual passion that was well on its way to drowning me. My own body was fully betraying me now, my pelvis rocking against the alien lover, thrusting its ever-changing phallic member deeper and deeper. I knew I needed to escape, that I was in mortal danger… But I could no longer resist the incredible pleasure that was being forced on me. My heart beat faster and faster until I could hear its thundering in my ears, and the nervous welling in my belly was a signal that I had but seconds until I would peak. My vision blurred, and I began to cry out in short gasps as my body was mercilessly pushed up and over the brink. With one final wail, I locked up in incredible pleasure, my mind buried by ecstasy.

Even as I came, my alien lover continued to drive me on. It never even slowed as I shook and gasped and twisted in my bonds until I gradually came down from my moment. I frowned in both exhaustion and confusion. I needed to rest, to regroup, but the creature was giving me no respite. Its liquid invasion of my sex continued without pause. Now, truly frightened, I understood that if I didn’t find a way to escape soon, it was over. Physically, I could only take that kind of sexual experience for so long before I would be rendered limp, let alone how it was affecting my concentration. Already, I had a hard time refocusing my eyes. It took all my will to push back the stimulation enough to even come down fully from my orgasm.

As if on cue, the bulbous creature changed its attack slightly, adding its own thrusting motion to that of my wayward hips, and I gasped and jerked in surprise. The new stimulation was impossible to resist, and I felt myself building into ecstasy a second time, but just before I peaked, my body thrashing in an effort to escape the torturous pleasure, I felt something jab my thigh. Then, I was falling into timeless bliss, unaware of the world.

A sharp spike of delight at my nipples brought me back to reality, and it took me nearly a full minute to override the passion this time. And even then, I was barely holding on. I knew that all it would take was a slight change in the pace of the creature and I would once be once again plunged into drowning ecstasy. But I remembered the poke to my leg. In fact, I could still feel something there, something hard and slightly sharp. With my arms locked at my sides, my hands happened to be trapped at just about the right height, so I felt along my outer thigh with my fingers… and found the pocket of my skirt. And in that pocket was a fork.

Abruptly, my mind cleared a bit at this new revelation. I remembered dropping the utensil into my skirt purely instinctively when I was clearing plates to be recycled. It wasn’t much in the way of a modern weapon, but perhaps it didn’t need to be. I quickly wrapped my fingers around the metal handle and somewhat awkwardly pulled it free of the garment. Then, being careful not to drop it, I turned it around in my grip with the tines facing down. It wasn’t easy. My alien lover sensed my emotional change and had invigorated its attack against me. It shifted from simple even strokes, to longer, more rapid and random thrusting. The new intercourse had no simple pattern that could be anticipated and I nearly dropped my only hope of escape in outright surprise. Had the creature started out this way, I could have resisted the pleasure easily, but now that I was already practically squirming with arousal, it was incredibly effective. I was making cries of uncontrolled passion almost at once, and yet another deadly orgasm was quickly threatening my hold on sanity. Whatever I was going to do, it had to be now. If I came again, I would surely drop the fork, and with it my slim chance to free myself.

The liquid tension was filling my belly, even as I lifted my forearm as high as possible in the bound grip of the creature. A sudden flick over my clit by the creature not only sent me into orbit, but actually worked against my attacker. As a jolting wave of ecstasy snapped my head back and nearly caused me to pass out, my arm crashed down with all the force my overstimulated body could muster.

They say that females in the height of passion have been known to break the bones of their lovers. I can’t say that its ever happened to me, but the adrenalin pumping through my veins had me more jazzed-up than an addict on LSD. I snapped my arm down hard enough that the fork not only punctured the tough surface of the creature, but plunged in right to my fist. Any modern aluminum utensil you might find at a restaurant these days would have probably crumpled under the impact. But this was a 1940’s diner fork. It was nearly four ounces of thick, all-American stainless steel. You couldn’t bend it even if you were to drive your car over the thing.

There was a violent tremble around my chest, and whatever was fucking me, suddenly pulled out so fast that I yelped in pain. The crushing grip of the creature tightened once, nearly pressing the air right out of my lungs, then quickly loosened. All at once I found myself sliding down the side of the beast until I landed with a soft thud on the grassy earth on my side. It took a moment to clear my head of both the orgasm, and the pain, but I smiled upon seeing that I still held the fork in my hand. Dragging myself to my feet, I looked for my teammates.

“Holy shit…” I said aloud as I spied Gerisha at the nearest mound. Seen clearly, the impossibility of her predicament was astounding. She was as I had seen her before, laying face down on the creature with her arms trapped as mine were. Her legs were spread wide and bound in layers of writhing flesh that appeared to grow or flow up from a series of depressions that encircled the organism near the ground. Those tendrils had pushed up her short skirt and were shifting in and out of her apex with full abandon. The Fretah herself was trembling and twitching, her whole body undulating occasionally as she was touched in some new way, but her face was a zombie-like mask. The woman was so buried in the the depths of constant orgasm, that her eyes had rolled up into her head, her mouth hung open and lax as she drooled in mindless passion. I could hear her making little gasps and grunts as her body continued to shiver into ecstasy, but she was no longer crying out in fear as I had heard her before.

I considered trying to free her from the tendrils by hand, but changed my mind when I felt more of the creature’s slippery fingers reach out and wrap around my own ankles.

“Sorry, Gerisha…” I said simply, then raised the fork over my head with both hands.

“AHHH!” She screamed and was then cut off by the constriction of air at her chest. The whole creature had shaken violently as I punctured its top much like I had my own. In moments, the tentacles at her legs and within her body had snapped back and all but disappeared back within the large, mound-like organism. A few seconds later, the Fretah was sliding freely down the side and to the grass, unconscious. I pulled her away toward the far side of the clearing, then went back for Tre’nae.

I found the Makali in a slightly more lucid state than Gerisha. Having four arms, the woman was better able to fight for her freedom, and it appeared that she had managed to keep at least two of her arms partially free of the initial attack by the creature. Like Gerisha, she had been hit from the front and pulled atop the mound face down, but where her legs were snagged and held apart, it appeared that her two free limbs had been snagged by tendrils from the other side of the creature. It left the woman in a “X” position with two of her arms stretched out above her head. There were scratch marks on the surface of the mound where she must have given her attacker quite the fight before she was finally held immobile. Not quite as gone as our Fretah friend, Tre’nae was none the less nearly unconscious with over-stimulation. She was tensing and twitching as her body was tortured with pleasure, but her face still reflected some awareness as I rushed up with my fork in hand.

I thought that I’d be less startled should the mound decide to try and snare me as Gerisha’s had, but Tre’nae’s was far more active and I gasped as my legs were instantly entangled by a dozen slippery tendrils that seemed to explode from the creature as soon as I was within range. I was so shocked at the speed at which the erotic fingers climbed my thighs and started right into my skirt, that I almost dropped the fork to reach down instinctively. Had I done so, I’m sure my wrists would have been trapped as well, and no amount of luck would have freed me a second time.

As it was, I was suddenly pulled forward hard, so that my legs were brought up against the surface of the alien, knocking me off balance and momentarily stunning me. In the two or three seconds that it took me to regain my composure, the warm flesh had swirled around my thighs and was already working on getting past my panties.

“Holy shit! You tricky bastard…”

It took all my will power to ignore the slimy fingers that were reaching into my already slick tunnel, and instead focus on my attack. I was just about to raise up my sole weapon, when the creature stunned me yet again by pulsing against my clitoris with a buzzing, mind-numbing touch. It was as though a highly skilled lover had just taken me into his mouth. I gasped, and fell forward, my body laying bent over the mound in shock as I gritted my teeth in an effort not to let my hands drop down within range. I could feel my feet being drawn apart, and I knew I was being positioned for better access.

“N-n-noooo! You are not g-g-getting me again! Ughnn!”

As if to prove me wrong, I suddenly felt a tug on my right hand. In surprise, I looked down and saw that tendrils from the other side of the creature had reached right over Tre’nea and wound around my wrist. Another group was going for my left hand, which I pulled back out of the way. With a jerk, my hips were pulled forward against the creature, and once again taking advantage of my brief stunned reaction, the organism slipped deep into my sex and resumed what its counterpart had been doing to me only minutes earlier.

It was too much. The warm flesh that had come up my thighs, continued up my body as it fucked me, winding over my hips, up my back and belly under my clothing, then enveloping my breasts in one smooth, slick motion. My mouth opened in shock, and my left hand dropped the utensil in an effort to even briefly forestall the sexual pleasure that was literally covering me with each passing second. But my hand never made it. More tendrils looped around my last hope of escape, and I was stretched out over Tre’nae, my face resting on the small of her back. I lasted only a few more moments before my already squirming body climaxed into bliss.

“AHH! No! Ughhnn! Ummmmm!!…. UGHN! UGHNN! UGHHNNNNN!!”

Being already exhausted, I was an easy mark for the creature, who worked my body mercilessly, pushing me right into a second orgasm almost on the heels of the first. I screamed and pulled to free myself, but it was no use. Once again I had been trapped, and this time, I knew there would be no escape. My weapon was gone, and my will to resist was quickly failing. Soon, I knew that I too would have that same glassy-eyed look that I had seen on Gerisha’s face.

How long I was tormented in this way, I couldn’t say, but quite suddenly I found myself being thrown to the ground. Luckily for me the area in the clearing was covered in a soft springy grass. I just laid there for nearly a minute, staring up at the strange star-lit sky while I tried to breathe and get my eyes to stay focused. My legs were a little numb below my pelvis, but my toes were tingling, so I figured I was reasonably unhurt. And then there was a face above me, speaking.

“Come on… snap out of it…” she was saying. “Tara…. TARA!”

I blinked and my vision locked on the Fretah woman.

“Gerisha?… You made it? You’re okay?”

She was nodding as she helped me sit up. “Good thing too. It looked like you were pretty well gone trying to help Tre’nea.”

I frowned and looked around. The four-armed female was laying on her back nearby. “Is she okay? What happened?!”

“I think she’s just unconscious, but I need your help to move her. I assume you were the one who freed me, yes,” she asked as we each took a pair of arms and dragged our match-mate toward the exit gate. “I woke up and saw you. I had a little memory of you jabbing something into the creature that was holding me. When I saw you over by Tre’nae, with that eating utensil in your hand, I understood. I thought you would free her too, but then you faltered and dropped it.”

“That thing was much more intense than the one that bagged me,” I commented. “I thought I was a goner.”

The Fretah smiled. “I remembered what you said about all of us making it together. You could have gone through the portal, but you didn’t. You risked your life to free me… and Tre’nae.”

“All for one, and one for all,” I quoted, holding up an imaginary sword. The Fretah just looked at me with a confused expression.

“…So I picked up the metal thing…”

“A fork. It’s called a fork.”

“Fork…” she repeated. “And I thrust it into the top of the creature as you must have done. A crude weapon, but it worked.”

“Indeed.”

“So now we need only to take Tre’nae through the portal and we are free.”

I thought about that. “Until the next time…”

When we were standing just in front of the exit gate, I walked a few feet back and surveyed what we had come through. Then, bending down, I picked up a small smooth stone and dropped it into my pocket. I helped Gerisha raise the Makali woman up to her feet as she started to wake, but before we all stepped through the odd neon arch, I squinted up at the artificial stars.

“A live audience…” I said to myself. Then, with a rather wicked grin, I raised my arm into the air and used a very humanoid gesture involving my middle finger.